now, it's the joy in the creature comforts and the indulgence of mostly hunkering down and hibernating in small boutique hotels with day trips and slow, drawn out meals. the research i do beforehand is only to find one perfect hotel, and a few perfect restaurants; everything else is more fun to absorb while there. in swedish, one does not "stay" in a hotel, rather one "lives" there, which used to be irritating in translation, but really quite applies at this stage. are swedes more enlightened travelers?
i travel now to eat – literally, tasting all of the food until i am ill (bad habit), but also, devouring local aesthetics like a buffet.
three places i have traveled to have had profound aesthetic impact on me, all within the past year, in order of occurrance:
1. Mallorca, where i gleaned that calm follows in the marriage of white and beige linen; that beige, and all of its relatives between it and grey, is not boring but instead serene; and i guessed (correctly) that beige would be my "gateway drug" to brown – my prior aversion now completely dismantled.
you may recall mr. big in sex and the city describing his relationship with natasha: "everything in my apartment is beige. beige is bullshit." except, i get natasha now.
in Mallorca we stayed at the Predi Son Jaumell.
2. Santorini, where the delight of the-brighter-the-better oversaturated color blocking against the white and blue is both ancient and timelessly chic.
in Santorini we stayed at the Grace.
3. Marrakech, where the intoxicating cocktail of moped petrol fumes, the particular type of light filtered by the maze of the city's architecture and its dusty terracotta and stone construction (strangely not dissimilar to the beautiful smog-created light in l.a.), the almost rococo devotion to its adornment and dizziness and wonder of the painted tiles with colors that seem both impossible and delicious, all culminate for me in a love of print, suede and metals worn all at once.
"marrakech taught me color" – yves saint laurent
here, we stayed at El Fenn.
the curious thing was – el fenn so beautifully exemplified the seemingly incongruent design concept of mid-century modern with moroccan/berber tradition. and now having seen the magic of that juxtaposition, it is ALL I WANT.
the hotel has several instances of stained glass, which are of course dazzling in light:
shortly after we booked el fenn, i saw these valentino shoes and short-circuited from the prospect of wearing them near that stained glass:
and so for weeks before traveling to the "red city", my mind raced with inspiration, seeing everything through moroccan rose-colored glasses. i felt compelled to make a fantasy morocco shopping list.
following, more valentino in this dress:
pucci:
of course, missoni:
and a few small but necessary accessories –
dolce & gabbana:
yves saint laurent: 
and miu miu:
in the end, these miu miu sandals did make their way from wishlist to reality:
i really felt so much at home with the color and vibrancy of the environment (despite that i wear head to toe black most days) and since, i have subsided in cold, windy, rainy stockholm on those visions.
everybody travels for different reasons, but for me in huge part it is to reside in those visions, for as long as i can. and for some, that doesn't require going anywhere at all.
so i end with these:
"the eye has to travel" – diana vreeland
"it's much more inspiring not to go places than to go."
"backstage after the paris-bombay show, a reporter questioned his decision to take inspiration from an india that exists in an imaginary past, rather than visit the real india. 'i'm against reality,' he replied." – karl lagerfeld (both quotes after the arts et metiers/pre-fall 2012 collection)
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